Highlighting Our PHLAFF 2026 LOLA Nominees
July 5th might mark the end of our 2026 festival dates, but it also highlights one of PHLAFF's most exciting announcements: sharing our 2026 LOLA Awards winners with you. Our team wants to share a bit more about LOLA, the nominees, and their projects before the announcement.
What is LOLA?
PHLAFF’s LOLA Awards recognize and honor cinematic achievements in filmmaking that bring together all of the elements that make for a great film, including direction, acting, cinematography, script/writing, and storytelling.
The LOLA Awards were established in 2014 to recognize and honor cinematic achievements in filmmaking in the Latine creative community. Each year, the LOLA Award focuses on a different genre, topic, or story. Past themes have included: documentaries, LGBTQIA+ stories, afrodescendence, collaboration, and more.
The Theme of Joy for Los Quince
In our Los Quince season, PHLAFF’s selected LOLA theme was “joy”.
In essence, joy is a powerful, internal wellspring of contentment and purpose, a more profound and stable counterpart to the fleeting nature of happiness, capable of sustaining one through life's varied experiences. It is a more internal and enduring state, a deeper sense of fulfillment and well-being that can be present even in the absence of immediate happiness.
We encouraged filmmakers to explore how their work might relate to this theme, whether directly or more abstractly. What elements of joy were in their work? What is the film’s core, its heart, or its nature? How is this expressed within a film?
Our Screening Committee considered these concepts of joy when viewing LOLA-nominated works. Though nominated films may not have a central focus on joy, elements of the concept are present within portions of the work.
LOLA Nominees of PHLAFF 2026
Below are our LOLA Nominees for PHLAFF 2026. Click to learn more about each of the films!
LOLA Nominees - Los Features
LOLA Nominees - Los Shorts
